SERBS(®American Serbs)  (central and western part of the Balkan Peninsula, South-East Europe)

 

Index EuropeYugoslavia Serbs

 

 

 

“Old people take great offence when children speak or write licentious words. One day a peasant visited the school and found the teacher beating his son. When the teacher told him that he was punishing his son because he had written bad words on the wall, the peasant answered: “Can that be written in letters too? Kill him, sir, please!” (Pavlovic, 1973)[1].

 

On the other hand, Pavlovic found that “[s]ome peasants do not know what sights female children should not witness. I once saw a peasant holding a mare and forcing his daughter-in-law and his daughter to drive the stallion to service it”.

 

According Halpern’s (1967)[2] study of the community of Orasac in the heart of traditional Old Serbia, “[t]he physical changes that accompany adolescence are regarded with secrecy and shame, in keeping with the severely repressive attitude toward sex. Information about menstruation is learned from other girls at school and not at home. After the onset, however, mothers, grandmothers, and aunts are full of advice and folk remedies which they readily pass on”.

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

Janssen, D. F., Growing Up Sexually. VolumeI. World Reference Atlas. 0.2 ed. 2004. Berlin: Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology

Last revised: Sept 2004

 



[1] Pavlovic, (1973) Folk Life and Customs in the Kragujevac Region of the Jasenica in Sumdaija. New Haven, Conn.: HRAF

[2] Halpern, J. M. (1967) A SerbianVillage. New York: Harper & Row